In the mess-room Powell found Mr Franklin hacking at a piece of cold
salt beef with a table knife. The mate, fiery in the face and rolling
his eyes over that task, explained that the carver belonging to the
mess-room could not be found. The steward, present also, complained
savagely of the cook. The fellow got things into his galley and then
lost them. Mr Franklin tried to pacify him with mournful firmness.
“There, there! That will do. We who have been all these years together
in the ship have other things to think about than quarrelling among
ourselves.”
Mr Powell thought with exasperation: “Here he goes again,” for this
utterance had nothing cryptic for him. The steward having withdrawn
morosely, he was not surprised to hear the mate strike the usual note.
That morning the mizzen topsail-tie had carried away (probably a
defective link) and something like forty feet of chain and wire-rope,
mixed up with a few heavy iron blocks, had crashed down from aloft on
the poop with a terrifying racket.
“Did you notice the captain then, Mr Powell. Did you notice?”
Powell confessed frankly that he was too scared himself when all that
lot of gear came down on deck to notice anything.
“The gin-block missed his head by an inch,” went on the mate
impressively. “I wasn’t three feet from him. And what did he do? Did
he shout, or jump, or even look aloft to see if the yard wasn’t coming
down too about our ears in a dozen pieces? It’s a marvel it didn’t.
No, he just stopped short—no wonder; he must have felt the wind of that
iron gin-block on his face—looked down at it, there, lying close to his
foot—and went on again. I believe he didn’t even blink. It isn’t
natural. The man is stupefied.”
He sighed ridiculously and Mr Powell had suppressed a grin, when the
mate added as if he couldn’t contain himself:
“He will be taking to drink next. Mark my words. That’s the next
thing.”
Mr Powell was disgusted.
“You are so fond of the captain and yet you don’t seem to care what you
say about him. I haven’t been with him for seven years, but I know he
isn’t the sort of man that takes to drink. And then—why the devil
should he?”
“Why the devil, you ask. Devil—eh? Well, no man is safe from the
devil—and that’s answer enough for you,” wheezed Mr Franklin not
unkindly. “There was a time, a long time ago, when I nearly took to
drink myself. What do you say to that?”
Mr Powell expressed a polite incredulity. The thick, congested mate
seemed on the point of bursting with despondency. “That was bad example
though. I was young and fell into dangerous company, made a fool of
myself—yes, as true as you see me sitting here. Drank to forget.
Thought it a great dodge.”
Powell looked at the grotesque Franklin with awakened interest and with
that half-amused sympathy with which we receive unprovoked confidences
from men with whom we have no sort of affinity. And at the same time he
began to look upon him more seriously. Experience has its prestige.
And the mate continued:
“If it hadn’t been for the old lady, I would have gone to the devil. I
remembered her in time. Nothing like having an old lady to look after
to steady a chap and make him face things. But as bad luck would have
it, Captain Anthony has no mother living, not a blessed soul belonging
to him as far as I know. Oh, ay, I fancy he said once something to me
of a sister. But she’s married. She don’t need him. Yes. In the old
days he used to talk to me as if we had been brothers,” exaggerated the
mate sentimentally. “‘Franklin,’—he would say—‘this ship is my
nearest relation and she isn’t likely to turn against me. And I suppose
you are the man I’ve known the longest in the world.’ That’s how he
used to speak to me. Can I turn my back on him? He has turned his back
on his ship; that’s what it has come to. He has no one now but his old
Franklin. But what’s a fellow to do to put things back as they were and
should be. Should be—I say!”
His starting eyes had a terrible fixity. Mr Powell’s irresistible
thought, “he resembles a boiled lobster in distress,” was followed by
annoyance. “Good Lord,” he said, “you don’t mean to hint that Captain
Anthony has fallen into bad company. What is it you want to save him
from?”
“I do mean it,” affirmed the mate, and the very absurdity of the
statement made it impressive—because it seemed so absolutely audacious.
“Well, you have a cheek,” said young Powell, feeling mentally helpless.
“I have a notion the captain would half kill you if he were to know how
you carry on.”
“And welcome,” uttered the fervently devoted Franklin. “I am willing,
if he would only clear the ship afterwards of that.... You are but a
youngster and you may go and tell him what you like. Let him knock the
stuffing out of his old Franklin first and think it over afterwards.
Anything to pull him together. But of course you wouldn’t. You are all
right. Only you don’t know that things are sometimes different from
what they look. There are friendships that are no friendships, and
marriages that are no marriages.... Phoo! Likely to be right—wasn’t
it? Never a hint to me. I go off on leave and when I come back, there
it is—all over, settled! Not a word beforehand. No warning. If only:
‘What do you think of it, Franklin?’—or anything of the sort. And
that’s a man who hardly ever did anything without asking my advice.
Why! He couldn’t take over a new coat from the tailor without ... first
thing, directly the fellow came on board with some new clothes, whether
in London or in China, it would be: ‘Pass the word along there for Mr
Franklin. Mr Franklin wanted in the cabin.’ In I would go. ‘Just
look at my back, Franklin. Fits all right, doesn’t it?’ And I would
say: ‘First-rate, sir,’ or whatever was the truth of it. That or
anything else. Always the truth of it. Always. And well he knew it;
and that’s why he dared not speak right out. Talking about workmen,
alterations, cabins.... Phoo!... instead of a straightforward—‘Wish me
joy, Mr Franklin!’ Yes, that was the way to let me know. God only
knows what they are—perhaps she isn’t his daughter any more than she
is.... She doesn’t resemble that old fellow. Not a bit. Not a bit.
It’s very awful. You may well open your mouth, young man. But for
goodness’ sake, you who are mixed up with that lot, keep your eyes and
ears open too in case—in case of—I don’t know what. Anything. One
wonders what can happen here at sea! Nothing. Yet when a man is called
a jailer behind his back.”
Mr Franklin hid his face in his hands for a moment and Powell shut his
mouth, which indeed had been open. He slipped out of the mess-room
noiselessly. “The mate’s crazy,” he thought. It was his firm
conviction. Nevertheless, that evening, he felt his inner tranquillity
disturbed at last by the force and obstinacy of this craze. He couldn’t
dismiss it with the contempt it deserved. Had the word “jailer” really
been pronounced? A strange word for the mate to even _imagine_ he had
heard. A senseless, unlikely word. But this word being the only clear
and definite statement in these grotesque and dismal ravings was
comparatively restful to his mind. Powell’s mind rested on it still
when he came up at eight o’clock to take charge of the deck. It was a
moonless night, thick with stars above, very dark on the water. A
steady air from the west kept the sails asleep. Franklin mustered both
watches in low tones as if for a funeral, then approaching Powell:
“The course is east-south-east,” said the chief mate distinctly.
“East-south-east, sir.”
“Everything’s set, Mr Powell.”
“All right, sir.”
The other lingered, his sentimental eyes gleamed silvery in the shadowy
face. “A quiet night before us. I don’t know that there are any
special orders. A settled, quiet night. I dare say you won’t see the
captain. Once upon a time this was the watch he used to come up and
start a chat with either of us then on deck. But now he sits in that
infernal stern-cabin and mopes. Jailer—eh?”
Mr Powell walked away from the mate and when at some distance said,
“Damn!” quite heartily. It was a confounded nuisance. It had ceased to
be funny; that hostile word “jailer” had given the situation an air of
reality.
Franklin’s grotesque mortal envelope had disappeared from the poop to
seek its needful repose, if only the worried soul would let it rest a
while. Mr Powell, half sorry for the thick little man, wondered
whether it would let him. For himself, he recognised that the charm of
a quiet watch on deck when one may let one’s thoughts roam in space and
time had been spoiled without remedy. What shocked him most was the
implied aspersion of complicity on Mrs Anthony. It angered him. In
his own words to me, he felt very “enthusiastic” about Mrs Anthony.
“Enthusiastic” is good; especially as he couldn’t exactly explain to me
what he meant by it. But he felt enthusiastic, he says. That silly
Franklin must have been dreaming. That was it. He had dreamed it all.
Ass. Yet the injurious word stuck in Powell’s mind with its associated
ideas of prisoner, of escape. He became very uncomfortable. And just
then (it might have been half an hour or more since he had relieved
Franklin) just then Mr Smith came up on the poop alone, like a gliding
shadow and leaned over the rail by his side. Young Powell was affected
disagreeably by his presence. He made a movement to go away but the
other began to talk—and Powell remained where he was as if retained by
a mysterious compulsion. The conversation started by Mr Smith had
nothing peculiar. He began to talk of mail-boats in general and in the
end seemed anxious to discover what were the services from Port
Elizabeth to London. Mr Powell did not know for certain but imagined
that there must be communication with England at least twice a month.
“Are you thinking of leaving us, sir; of going home by steam? Perhaps
with Mrs Anthony,” he asked anxiously.
“No! No! How can I?” Mr Smith got quite agitated, for him, which did
not amount to much. He was just asking for the sake of something to
talk about. No idea at all of going home. One could not always do what
one wanted and that’s why there were moments when one felt ashamed to
live. This did not mean that one did not want to live. Oh no!
He spoke with careless slowness, pausing frequently and in such a low
voice that Powell had to strain his hearing to catch the phrases dropped
overboard as it were. And indeed they seemed not worth the effort. It
was like the aimless talk of a man pursuing a secret train of thought
far removed from the idle words we so often utter only to keep in touch
with our fellow beings. An hour passed. It seemed as though Mr Smith
could not make up his mind to go below. He repeated himself. Again he
spoke of lives which one was ashamed of. It was necessary to put up
with such lives as long as there was no way out, no possible issue. He
even alluded once more to mail-boat services on the East coast of Africa
and young Powell had to tell him once more that he knew nothing about
them.
“Every fortnight, I thought you said,” insisted Mr Smith. He stirred,
seemed to detach himself from the rail with difficulty. His long,
slender figure straightened into stiffness, as if hostile to the
enveloping soft peace of air and sea and sky, emitted into the night a
weak murmur which Mr Powell fancied was the word, “Abominable” repeated
three times, but which passed into the faintly louder declaration: “The
moment has come—to go to bed,” followed by a just audible sigh.
“I sleep very well,” added Mr Smith in his restrained tone. “But it is
the moment one opens one’s eyes that is horrible at sea. These days!
Oh, these days! I wonder how anybody can....”
“I like the life,” observed Mr Powell.
“Oh, you. You have only yourself to think of. You have made your bed.
Well, it’s very pleasant to feel that you are friendly to us. My
daughter has taken quite a liking to you, Mr Powell.”
He murmured, “Good-night” and glided away rigidly. Young Powell asked
himself with some distaste what was the meaning of these utterances.
His mind had been worried at last into that questioning attitude by no
other person than the grotesque Franklin. Suspicion was not natural to
him. And he took good care to carefully separate in his thoughts Mrs
Anthony from this man of enigmatic words—her father. Presently he
observed that the sheen of the two deck dead-lights of Mr Smith’s room
had gone out. The old gentleman had been surprisingly quick in getting
into bed. Shortly afterwards the lamp in the foremost skylight of the
saloon was turned out; and this was the sign that the steward had taken
in the tray and had retired for the night.
Young Powell had settled down to the regular officer-of-the-watch tramp
in the dense shadow of the world decorated with stars high above his
head, and on earth only a few gleams of light about the ship. The lamp
in the after skylight was kept burning through the night. There were
also the dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck
far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The brasses
of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man
detached, as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled
background of the horizon.
Young Powell, in the silence of the ship, reinforced by the great silent
stillness of the world, said to himself that there was something
mysterious in such beings as the absurd Franklin, and even in such
beings as himself. It was a strange and almost improper thought to
occur to the officer of the watch of a ship on the high seas on no
matter how quiet a night. Why on earth was he bothering his head? Why
couldn’t he dismiss all these people from his mind? It was as if the
mate had infected him with his own diseased devotion. He would not have
believed it possible that he should be so foolish. But he was—clearly.
He was foolish in a way totally unforeseen by himself. Pushing this
self-analysis further, he reflected that the springs of his conduct were
just as obscure.
“I may be catching myself any time doing things of which I have no
conception,” he thought. And as he was passing near the mizzen-mast he
perceived a coil of rope left lying on the deck by the oversight of the
sweepers. By an impulse which had nothing mysterious in it, he stooped
as he went by with the intention of picking it up and hanging it up on
its proper pin. This movement brought his head down to the level of the
glazed end of the after skylight—the lighted skylight of the most
private part of the saloon, consecrated to the exclusiveness of Captain
Anthony’s married life; the part, let me remind you, cut off from the
rest of that forbidden space by a pair of heavy curtains. I mention
these curtains because at this point Mr Powell himself recalled the
existence of that unusual arrangement, to my mind.
He recalled them with simple-minded compunction at that distance of
time. He said: “You understand that directly I stooped to pick up that
coil of running gear—the spanker foot-outhaul, it was—I perceived that
I could see right into that part of the saloon the curtains were meant
to make particularly private. Do you understand me?” he insisted.
I told him that I understood; and he proceeded to call my attention to
the wonderful linking up of small facts, with something of awe left yet,
after all these years, at the precise workmanship of chance, fate,
providence, call it what you will! “For, observe, Marlow,” he said,
making at me very round eyes which contrasted funnily with the austere
touch of grey on his temples, “observe, my dear fellow, that everything
depended on the men who cleared up the poop in the evening leaving that
coil of rope on the deck, and on the topsail-tie carrying away in a most
incomprehensible and surprising manner earlier in the day, and the end
of the chain whipping round the coaming and shivering to bits the
coloured glass-pane at the end of the skylight. It had the arms of the
city of Liverpool on it; I don’t know why unless because the _Ferndale_
was registered in Liverpool. It was very thick plate-glass. Anyhow,
the upper part got smashed, and directly we had attended to things aloft
Mr Franklin had set the carpenter to patch up the damage with some
pieces of plain glass. I don’t know where they got them; I think the
people who fitted up new bookcases in the captain’s room had left some
spare panes. Chips was there the whole afternoon on his knees, messing
with putty and red-lead. It wasn’t a neat job when it was done, not by
any means, but it would serve to keep the weather out and let the light
in. Clear glass. And of course I was not thinking of it. I just
stooped to pick up that rope and found my head within three inches of
that clear glass, and—dash it all! I found myself out. Not half an
hour before I was saying to myself that it was impossible to tell what
was in people’s heads or at the back of their talk, or what they were
likely to be up to. And here I found myself up to as low a trick as you
can well think of. For, after I had stooped, there I remained prying,
spying, anyway looking, where I had no business to look. Not
consciously at first, may be. He who has eyes, you know, nothing can
stop him from seeing things as long as there are things to see in front
of him. What I saw at first was the end of the table and the tray
clamped on to it, a patent tray for sea use, fitted with holders for a
couple of decanters, water-jug and glasses. The glitter of these things
caught my eye first; but what I saw next was the captain down there,
alone as far as I could see; and I could see pretty well the whole of
that part up to the cottage piano, dark against the satin-wood panelling
of the bulkhead. And I remained looking. I did. And I don’t know that
I was ashamed of myself either, then. It was the fault of that
Franklin, always talking of the man, making free with him to that extent
that really he seemed to have become our property, his and mine, in a
way. It’s funny, but one had that feeling about Captain Anthony. To
watch him was not so much worse than listening to Franklin talking him
over. Well, it’s no use making excuses for what’s inexcusable. I
watched; but I dare say you know that there could have been nothing
inimical in this low behaviour of mine. On the contrary. I’ll tell you
now what he was doing. He was helping himself out of a decanter. I saw
every movement, and I said to myself mockingly as though jeering at
Franklin in my thoughts ‘Hallo! Here’s the captain taking to drink at
last.’ He poured a little brandy or whatever it was into a long glass,
filled it with water, drank about a fourth of it and stood the glass
back into the holder. Every sign of a bad drinking bout, I was saying
to myself, feeling quite amused at the notions of that Franklin. He
seemed to me an enormous ass; with his jealousy and his fears. At that
rate a month would not have been enough for anybody to get drunk. The
captain sat down in one of the swivel armchairs fixed around the table;
I had him right under me and as he turned the chair slightly, I was
looking, I may say, down his back. He took another little sip and then
reached for a book which was lying on the table. I had not noticed it
before. Altogether the proceedings of a desperate drunkard—weren’t
they? He opened the book and held it before his face. If this was the
way he took to drink, then I needn’t worry. He was in no danger from
that, and as to any other, I assure you no human being could have looked
safer than he did down there. I felt the greatest contempt for Franklin
just then, while I looked at Captain Anthony sitting there with a glass
of weak brandy-and-water at his elbow and reading in the cabin of his
ship, on a quiet night—the quietest, perhaps the finest, of a
prosperous passage. And if you wonder why I didn’t leave off my ugly
spying I will tell you how it was. Captain Anthony was a great reader
just about that time; and I, too, I have a great liking for books. To
this day I can’t come near a book but I must know what it is about. It
was a thickish volume he had there, small close print, double columns—I
can see it now. What I wanted to make out was the title at the top of
the page. I have very good eyes but he wasn’t holding it conveniently—
I mean for me up there. Well, it was a history of some kind, that much
I read and then suddenly he bangs the book face down on the table, jumps
up as if something had bitten him and walks away aft.
“Funny thing shame is. I had been behaving badly and aware of it in a
way, but I didn’t feel really ashamed till the fright of being found out
in my honourable occupation drove me from it. I slunk away to the
forward end of the poop and lounged about there, my face and ears
burning and glad it was a dark night, expecting every moment to hear the
captain’s footsteps behind me. For I made sure he was coming on deck.
Presently I thought I had rather meet him face to face and I walked
slowly aft prepared to see him emerge from the companion before I got
that far. I even thought of his having detected me by some means. But
it was impossible, unless he had eyes in the top of his head. I had
never had a view of his face down there. It was impossible; I was safe;
and I felt very mean, yet, explain it as you may, I seemed not to care.
And the captain not appearing on deck, I had the impulse to go on being
mean. I wanted another peep. I really don’t know what was the beastly
influence except that Mr Franklin’s talk was enough to demoralise any
man by raising a sort of unhealthy curiosity which did away in my case
with all the restraints of common decency.
“I did not mean to run the risk of being caught squatting in a
suspicious attitude by the captain. There was also the helmsman to
consider. So what I did—I am surprised at my low cunning—was to sit
down naturally on the skylight-seat and then by bending forward I found
that, as I expected, I could look down through the upper part of the
end-pane. The worst that could happen to me then, if I remained too
long in that position, was to be suspected by the seaman aft at the
wheel of having gone to sleep there. For the rest my ears would give me
sufficient warning of any movements in the companion.
“But in that way my angle of view was changed. The field too was
smaller. The end of the table, the tray and the swivel-chair I had
right under my eyes. The captain had not come back yet. The piano I
could not see now; but on the other hand I had a very oblique downward
view of the curtains drawn across the cabin and cutting off the forward
part of it just about the level of the skylight-end and only an inch or
so from the end of the table. They were heavy stuff, travelling on a
thick brass rod with some contrivance to keep the rings from sliding to
and fro when the ship rolled. But just then the ship was as still
almost as a model shut up in a glass case while the curtains, joined
closely, and, perhaps on purpose, made a little too long moved no more
than a solid wall.”
Marlow got up to get another cigar. The night was getting on to what I
may call its deepest hour, the hour most favourable to evil purposes of
men’s hate, despair or greed—to whatever can whisper into their ears
the unlawful counsels of protest against things that are; the hour of
ill-omened silence and chill and stagnation, the hour when the criminal
plies his trade and the victim of sleeplessness reaches the lowest depth
of dreadful discouragement; the hour before the first sight of dawn. I
know it, because while Marlow was crossing the room I looked at the
clock on the mantelpiece. He however never looked that way though it is
possible that he, too, was aware of the passage of time. He sat down
heavily.
“Our friend Powell,” he began again, “was very anxious that I should
understand the topography of that cabin. I was interested more by its
moral atmosphere, that tension of falsehood, of desperate acting, which
tainted the pure sea-atmosphere into which the magnanimous Anthony had
carried off his conquest and—well—his self-conquest too, trying to act
at the same time like a beast of prey, a pure spirit and the ‘most
generous of men.’ Too big an order clearly because he was nothing of a
monster but just a common mortal, a little more self-willed and
self-confident than most, may be, both in his roughness and in his
delicacy.”
As to the delicacy of Mr Powell’s proceedings I’ll say nothing. He
found a sort of depraved excitement in watching an unconscious man—and
such an attractive and mysterious man as Captain Anthony at that. He
wanted another peep at him. He surmised that the captain must come back
soon because of the glass two-thirds full and also of the book put down
so brusquely. God knows what sudden pang had made Anthony jump up so.
I am convinced he used reading as an opiate against the pain of his
magnanimity which like all abnormal growths was gnawing at his healthy
substance with cruel persistence. Perhaps he had rushed into his cabin
simply to groan freely in absolute and delicate secrecy. At any rate he
tarried there. And young Powell would have grown weary and compunctious
at last if it had not become manifest to him that he had not been alone
in the highly incorrect occupation of watching the movements of Captain
Anthony.
Powell explained to me that no sound did or perhaps could reach him from
the saloon. The first sign—and we must remember that he was using his
eyes for all they were worth—was an unaccountable movement of the
curtain. It was wavy and very slight; just perceptible in fact to the
sharpened faculties of a secret watcher; for it can’t be denied that our
wits are much more alert when engaged in wrong-doing (in which one
mustn’t be found out) than in a righteous occupation.
He became suspicious, with no one and nothing definite in his mind. He
was suspicious of the curtain itself and observed it. It looked very
innocent. Then just as he was ready to put it down to a trick of
imagination he saw trembling movements where the two curtains joined.
Yes! Somebody else besides himself had been watching Captain Anthony.
He owns artlessly that this roused his indignation. It was really too
much of a good thing. In this state of intense antagonism he was
startled to observe tips of fingers fumbling with the dark stuff. Then
they grasped the edge of the further curtain and hung on there, just
fingers and knuckles and nothing else. It made an abominable sight. He
was looking at it with unaccountable repulsion when a hand came into
view; a short, puffy, old, freckled hand projecting into the lamplight,
followed by a white wrist, an arm in a grey coat-sleeve, up to the
elbow, beyond the elbow, extended tremblingly towards the tray. Its
appearance was weird and nauseous, fantastic and silly. But instead of
grabbing the bottle as Powell expected, this hand, tremulous with senile
eagerness, swerved to the glass, rested on its edge for a moment (or so
it looked from above) and went back with a jerk. The gripping fingers
of the other hand vanished at the same time, and young Powell staring at
the motionless curtains could indulge for a moment the notion that he
had been dreaming.
But that notion did not last long. Powell, after repressing his first
impulse to spring for the companion and hammer at the captain’s door,
took steps to have himself relieved by the boatswain. He was in a state
of distraction as to his feelings and yet lucid as to his mind. He
remained on the skylight so as to keep his eye on the tray.
Still the captain did not appear in the saloon. “If he had,” said Mr
Powell, “I knew what to do. I would have put my elbow through the pane
instantly—crash.”